Course
Name, Units Greener Gardens: Sustainable Garden Practice, 4 units
Req
# 2455538
Course
Number X498.10
Quarter, Year Spring, 2015
Course
Information:
Location:
Classroom, The Learning Garden, 13000 Venice Blvd. campus of
Venice High School (enter off of Walgrove Avenue);
Dates:
Monday, March 31 – June 09, 2014, Mon, 6:30-9:30 PM
Field
Trip Dates: Saturday, April 18, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Saturday, April 25, 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Saturday,
May 09, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
 |
| Instructors: Orchid Black and David King |
Instructors
Information:
Name: Orchid
Black/David King
Email: >>>redacted<<< (available in class)
Email Policy: We
will have no set office hours, however, we will be available by phone
and by email. We are willing to meet with students by appointment.
David
King is a noted Los Angeles food gardener with over 40 years of
experience. He has served on the board of the American Community
Gardening Association and the California School Gardening Advisory
Board. His first book, Growing
Food In Southern California
is due out later this year. He is the director of The Learning
Garden and the Founding Chair of The Seed Library of Los Angeles, and
co-founder of Seed Freedom – LA, the group spear-heading the
anti-GMO ordinance in Los Angeles.
Orchid
Black is a garden designer and owner of Native Sanctuary which offers
native plant consulting, habitat creation and sustainable design
services. Orchid’s gardens have been featured on the Theodore
Payne Foundation’s garden tour. Orchid writes and lectures about
native horticulture, water-saving strategies, and sustainable
gardening.
Course
Description:
Sustainability
is today's buzzword and many people seek to create a lifestyle with a
more favorable impact on the environment. From home gardens to school
and commercial sites, our gardens present the perfect place to start.
Designed for horticulture students, gardening professionals,
educators, and home gardeners, this course focuses on turning your
green thumb into a "greener" garden. Topics include
composting, irrigation, water harvesting, water wise plants, eating
and growing local produce, recycling, and moving towards a
sustainable lifestyle when choosing materials and tools. Includes
weekend field trips to the Los Angeles River to see our relationship
with water in the L.A. Basin, as well as a native garden with
sustainable features, focusing not only on California native plants
but also on water-conserving planting design. Students also visit the
John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies at Cal Poly Pomona,
which advances the principles of environmentally sustainable living
through education, research, demonstration, and community outreach.
This course will enable students to understand and appreciate the
changes we will need to make in our gardens to achieve
‘sustainability.’ A multitude of differing strategies will be
presented allowing students to choose the extent of their involvement
with more sustainable gardens and, ultimately, a more sustainable
life style.
Course
Objectives/Learning Outcomes:
At
the end of this course, students will:
- Understand the concept of sustainability and its relevance to the modern garden.
- The reasons to consider sustainability.
- Be able to use the concept of sustainability in the creation of a garden and its maintenance.
- Understand and be able to present to others the concepts and ideas of sustainability and the myriad of alternatives to an overly consumptive garden style.
- Learning Objective
Course
Resources
This
course will not have a text. There will be an extensive
bibliography from which the material presented has been gleaned;
some books more practical, some theoretical, while others present
our current situation and the problems that affect our daily lives
and the gardens we grow.
Course
Overview
This
course is designed to be practical. Upon completion, students will
be able to employ many different strategies to reduce consumption of
water and oil-produced products and create beautiful and productive
gardens that comprise a much smaller carbon footprint than most
contemporary gardens.
For
this course we will utilize a blog page (lagardennotes.blogspot.com)
to
post handouts and extra material
to the class. There is an RSS feed that sends each posting
automatically to your email so you can have access to handouts
whenever they are posted. This approach is most handy when dealing
with field trips because links to maps can be posted and any last
minute updates are easily available. If this technology is new to
you, another classmate or David will guide you through it. It is
not difficult.
Those
of you on Facebook, there is the “Greener Gardens” group. While
not specifically composed of UCLA Extension students, it includes
students from David's classes with some talented professional
contributors. Handouts are posted there as PDF files. Occasional
job offers and other items of interest are posted as well.
Course
and Extension Policies
Grading:
All
grades except Incomplete are final when filed by the instructor of
record in an end-of-term course report. No change of grade may be
made on the basis of reassessment of the quality of a student's
work. No term grade except Incomplete may be revised by
re-examination.
Refunds:
Refund requests will be accepted until the close of business on the
final refund date, which is printed on your enrollment receipt.
Changes
in Credit Status and Withdrawals: Students
may petition the Registration office for changes to credit status,
or to withdraw from classes, prior to the administration of the
final examination. (After the midpoint of the course, a change in
credit status to one requiring assessment of student work will be
permitted only with the endorsement of the instructor-in-charge.)
Under no circumstances may a change in credit status or withdrawal
be approved for a student who has sat for a final examination.
Cheating:
UCLA Extension students are subject to disciplinary action for
several types of academic and related personal misconduct, including
but not limited to the following enumeration promulgated under
Regental authority.
“Dishonesty, such as cheating, multiple submission, plagiarism,
or knowingly furnishing false information to the University. Theft
or misuse of the intellectual property of others, or violation of
others' copyrights.”
Sanctions
may include Warning; Censure; Suspension; Interim Suspension;
Dismissal; and Restitution.
Absences:
If you must miss class please notify us as soon as possible. Make up
work will be penalized as late. More than 3 absences in a quarter may
result in a failing grade.
Your
grade will be predicated on class participation and your choice of
one project (or a combination of one of each for extra credit should
it be needed or desired) or one paper of no less than 5 pages on
aspects of sustainability; topics and project possibilities will be
discussed in class. We encourage students to use their own area of
interests when choosing their project or topic.
Grading:
Your
grade will be based on the following: Your grade will be calculated
using the following scale:
| Component | Points | |
Attendance
|
25% | |
Participation
|
35% | |
Final
Project
|
40% | |
Total
|
100% | |
| Grade | Percentage Scale | |
| A | 100-93% | |
| A- | 92-90% | |
| B+ | 89-87% | |
B
|
86-83% | |
| B- | 82-80% | |
| C+ | 79-77% | |
| C | 76-70% | |
| D | 69-60% | |
| F | 59% | |
Miscellaneous
Information:
The
room where we meet has no reliable source of heat therefore we
suggest you dress in layers. It is wise to carry a flashlight as
well; the lighting leaves somewhat to be desired.
There
is no place to purchase anything drinks or snacks nearby. We will
have coffee and/or tea if desired. Classes held at the garden in the
past have enjoyed a range of homemade snacks from the instructors
and/or other students.
Schedule:
| Session + Date | Topic | Notes |
30
March
|
Introduction
to Sustainability
|
|
06
April
|
Design for
Conservation of Resources
|
|
18
April
|
Lyle
Center for Regenerative Studies
|
Field
Trip
with Lyle Center Faculty
|
13
April
|
Soils
|
Bring
soil sample from your garden.
|
20 April
|
Water I:
Water Conservation
|
Preliminary
discussion of paper/project choice
|
25
April
|
Garden/Garden
and The Learning Garden
|
Afternoon
Field Trip
|
27 May
|
Water II:
Water Harvesting
|
|
04 May
|
Sustainability
of Front Yard Food
|
|
09
May
|
LA
River
|
Field
Trip
|
11 May
|
Sustainable Planting Palette |
Project
completion benchmark
|
18 May
|
Habitat and
Hardscape
|
|
01
June
|
Sustainable
Gardening: The Next Frontier
|
david
